yellow

plural yellows · alternative obsolete yeallow · alternative dialectal pronunciation spelling yeller · alternative pronunciation spelling yaller

1. countableuncountableThe color of sunflower petals and lemons; the color obtained by mixing green and red light, or by subtracting blue from white light; the color evoked by light of wavelength around 580 nm; one of the three primary colors in subtractive color systems.

   It is the strangest yellow, that wall-paper! It makes me think of all the yellow things I ever saw—not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things.

   1892, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper

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   Red No. 3, red No. 40, blue No. 2 and green No. 3 all have been linked with cancer or tumors in animals. Other sources say red No. 40 and yellow No. 5 and No. 6 contain or may be contaminated with known carcinogens.

   2025 March 29, Kristen Rogers, “Over half of US states are trying to eliminate food dyes. Here’s what you can do now”, in CNN

2. UScountableuncountableThe middle light in a set of three traffic lights, the lighting of which indicates that drivers should stop short of the intersection if it is safe to do so.

   Synonyms: amber

3. countableuncountableball gamesOne of the color balls used in snooker, with a value of 2 points.
4. countableuncountablegamesOne of two groups of object balls, or a ball from that group, as used in the principally British version of pool that makes use of unnumbered balls (the yellow(s) and red(s)); contrast stripes and solids in the originally American version with numbered balls).
5. countableuncountablehobbiesA yellow card.

   Andrew Surman fired in what proved to be a 37th-minute winner before Forest's Paul Konchesky saw red late on. That second yellow for the loan signing came in stoppage time and did not affect the outcome of a game which Norwich dominated.

   2011 April 15, Saj Chowdhury, “Norwich 2 - 1 Nott'm Forest”, in BBC Sport

6. countableuncountableA yellow dye or pigment.
7. countableuncountableA pen, pencil, crayon, etc., made of yellow pigment.
8. countableuncountableSomething, or a part of a thing, which is yellow.
9. countableuncountableAny of various pierid butterflies of the subfamily Coliadinae, especially the yellow colored species. Compare sulphur.

   Several other beautiful butterflies rewarded my search in this place [...] The most abundant butterflies were the whites and yellows (Pieridae), several of which I had already found at Lombock and at Coupang, while others were new to me.

   1869, Alfred Russel Wallace, The Malay Archipelago, volume I, London: Macmillan and Co., page 297

comparative yellower · superlative yellowest · alternative obsolete yeallow · alternative dialectal pronunciation spelling yeller · alternative pronunciation spelling yaller

1. Of a yellow hue.

   He had a yellow laptop in his bag.

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   A sweaty reaper from his tillage brought / First fruits, the green ear and the yellow sheaf.

   1667, John Milton, “Book X”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC, line 434

   Red o'er the forest glows the setting sun, / The line of yellow light dies fast away / That crown'd the eastern copse, and chill and dun / Falls on the moor the brief November day.

   1827, [John Keble], “Twenty-third Sunday after Trinity”, in The Christian Year: Thoughts in Verse for the Sundays and Holydays throughout the Year, volume II, Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] [B]y W. Baxter, for J. Parker; and C[harles] and J[ohn] Rivington, […], →OCLC, page 85

   There's a one-eyed yellow idol / To the north of Kathmandu; / There's a little marble cross below the town; / And a brokenhearted woman / Tends the grave of 'Mad' Carew, / While the yellow god for ever gazes down.

   1911, J. Milton Hayes, The green eye of the little yellow god

   Antonyms: nonyellow, unyellow

2. informalLacking courage.

   You yellow bastards! Come back here and take what's coming to you!

   1975, Monty Python, Monty Python and the Holy Grail

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   What you should be is not yellow at all. If you're supposed to sock somebody in the jaw, and you sort of feel like doing it, you should do it.

   1951 July 16, J[erome] D[avid] Salinger, chapter 13, in The Catcher in the Rye, Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown and Company, →OCLC

   Synonyms: cowardly

3. journalismCharacterized by sensationalism, lurid content, and doubtful accuracy.

   The denizens of the gossipy world of the pink press, purple prose and yellow tabloids are shivering over disputed photographs of Princess Caroline of Monaco.

   2004 October 4, Doreen Carvajal, “Photo edict muffles gossipy press”, in International Herald Tribune, retrieved 29 Jul 2008

4. derogatoryethnicoffensiveslurOf a hue attributed to Far East Asians, especially the Chinese.

   They were all tall and all handsome, though they varied in their degree of darkness of skin, some being as dark as Mahomed, and some as yellow as a Chinese.

   1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC

5. derogatoryethnicoffensiveslurFar East Asian (relating to Asian people).

   The two youths, the brown and the yellow, faced each other at the cross-roads, under a dim street-lamp.

   1959, Anthony Burgess, Beds in the East (The Malayan Trilogy), published 1972, page 516

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   Imagine that awful being, and you have a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the yellow peril incarnate in one man.

   1913, Sax Rohmer, The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu

6. AustraliadatedoffensiveOf mixed Aboriginal and Caucasian ancestry.

   "Eh, Oscar—you hear about your yeller nephew?".

   1938, Xavier Herbert, chapter VI, in Capricornia, page 64

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   A big full-blood gin cottoned onto me. “Give us a drink, yeller feller.”

   1965, Mudrooroo, Wild Cat Falling, HarperCollins, published 2001, page 74

7. USdatedSynonym of high yellow.

   Charley threw her over for a yellow gal named Nancy: he never forgave Vashti for the vanishing from his life of a menace that had come to mean more to him than Vashti herself.

   1933 September 9, James Thurber, “My Life and Hard Times—VI. A Sequence of Servants”, in The New Yorker

   Synonyms: high yellow

8. UKgovernmentRelated to the Liberal Democrats.

   yellow constituencies

9. governmentRelated to the Free Democratic Party, a political party in Germany.

   the black–yellow coalition

present singular third person yellows · participle present yellowing · participle past yellowed · past yellowed · alternative obsolete yeallow · alternative dialectal pronunciation spelling yeller · alternative pronunciation spelling yaller

1. intransitiveTo become yellow or yellower.

   Then suddenly, with the least warning, the sky yellows and the Chergui blows in from the Sahara, stinging the eyes and choking with its sandy, sticky breath.

   1977, Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace, New York: Review Books, published 2006, page 47

   1 more example

   Interviews, clippings, yellowing stories from foreign newspapers, notebooks with old scribblings. Salisbury called it the debris of a reporter always too much on the run to sort out the paper, but there it was, an investigator's dream, […]

   2013, Robert Miraldi, Seymour Hersh, Potomac Books, Inc., →ISBN, page 187

2. transitiveTo make (something) yellow or yellower.
3. historicaltransitiveRoyal NavyTo promote (a captain) to flag rank without command of a squadron, ending his career; to make him a yellow admiral.

   Then they might yellow him if they wanted to; he would be satisfied with Admiral’s rank.

   1938, C. S. Forester, chapter 2, in A Ship of the Line, London: Michael Joseph

alternative obsolete yeallow · alternative dialectal pronunciation spelling yeller · alternative pronunciation spelling yaller

1. procedure wordBDSMUsed to indicate that the speaker needs a temporary break from current sexual activity.

1. A surname.